Inspiring Innovation

Policy School scholarship seeks to deliver a positive impact on real-world challenges. On a broad array of issues ranging from climate change to gun violence, Policy School faculty paved the way for transformative change in communities both in Northeastern's immediate neighborhoods and worldwide.

Boston Climate Progress Report

Joan Fitzgerald

In partnership with the Boston Foundation, the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy is working to complete the inaugural Boston Climate Progress Report. Professor Joan Fitzgerald is leading the team conducting research for the report. She is joined by Professor Ted Landsmark, Professor Kaitlyn Alvarez Noli, and Michael Jay Walsh, an independent decarbonization consultant The report will assess the city’s progress on its climate action and resiliency plans with a particular focus on equity

Global Science Missions

Maria Ivanova

Policy School Director Maria

Ivanova, an inaugural Fellow of the International Science Council, was a member of the Council’s Technical Advisory Group. The Group provided science advice for a new report released at the 2023 High Level Political Forum at the United Nations in New York Flipping the Science Model: A Roadmap to Science Missions makes an argument for fundamentally redesigning and scaling up global science and science funding. Prof. Ivanova spoke at the UN to urge action on the steps necessary to meet the complex needs of humanity and the planet.

Joan Fitzgerald, Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs

PLANNING

COASTAL

Transformational

Adaption

Laura Kuhl and Moira Zellner

Climate-intensified storms and rising seas demand solutions beyond incremental change new planning approaches are needed for equitable coastal adaptation In collaboration with Julia Hopkins (College of Engineering), Laura Kuhl and Moira Zellner will develop a framework to evaluate transformational coastal adaptation strategies in Boston using a climate justice lens. The project will explore the distributional aspects of adaptation, identify which people and structures are displaced through adaptation, and propose equitable alternatives. They will use participatory modeling techniques to co-design the adaptation scenarios with community members and establish the constraints and priorities for transformation in the community

Mass Killing Database

James Alan Fox

Over the past decade, USA TODAY, along with Northeastern University and The Associated Press, has been tracking all mass killings in the United States. The database includes every mass killing since 2006 from all weapons in which four or more people, excluding the offender, were killed within a 24-hour time frame. The database also includes dozens of variables on each incident, offender, victim, and weapon

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy, oversees the database and continues to add information drawn from media reports, FBI data, arrest records, medical examiners' reports, prison records and other court documents. For this work, Prof. Fox won two EPPY awards, which honor the best in digital news publishing.

Evaluation Of A Harm Reduction Training Program

Emily Mann and Lori Gardinier

Through the HaRT Scholars program, RIZE MA seeks to learn how to successfully transform graduate education for social workers to include principles and practices of harm reduction with the goal of replicating these learnings across Massachusetts and the country. The program aims to:

1) promote a culture of harm reduction; 2) increase the clinical presence at harm reduction organizations/agencies to improve linkages to behavioral health and medical treatment; and 3) increase the presence of racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse social workers in the work of harm reduction

COMMON SENSES: STANDARDS FOR ENACTING SENSOR NETWORKS FOR AN EQUITABLE SOCIETY

Dan O'Brien and Moira Zellner

Common SENSES project leaders work with non-profits and municipal governments to generate community-led, data-driven engagement around local development projects The work integrates cutting-edge sensor technology, data modeling, and participatory modeling approaches with public conversations to identify “microspatial inequities” in environmental hazards, simulate how different construction decisions might intensify or mitigate those hazards, and support deliberation for solutions that respond to this information in a manner aligned with the community’s priorities and values